Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
I heard the truck before it pulled into the driveway. A fine layer of dust coated its sides. Across the road, the open field of waist-high grass swayed in unison.
Something about the conversation with Hadrian spurred me.
Meeting with Ivan didn’t have to mean I was forgiving him.
It was just a packet. A review, really, if I thought about it.
This was a toe to the line. An attempt to move in a direction.
That’s what adults did. They set aside their differences, tugged up their bootstraps, and tried to work with the person they hated.
I set the last half of my protein shake on the foyer table and made to unlock the front door. Ivan had already thrown the truck in park and climbed out of the cab. The very sight of his smile made the farthest corners of my heart curl up, curl away.
His attention immediately snagged on me as I opened the front door. His laptop, stacked against a manila folder, was pinched under his arm. I suddenly wished Emma hadn’t left yet. Or, even better, that dark had fallen and I had the assurance of Hadrian lurking in some odd corner.
“Landry,” he greeted, hand shielding his eyes.
I braced myself. No, I couldn’t rely on other people to handle my issues. This was for me to work with.
I gave a strained smile. “Ivan.”
“You look lovely.”
I put on my brave face. “Thank you for stopping by.” Maybe something had changed in the last near decade—maybe Emma was right. Maybe I was being too hard on him.
Ivan started to climb the steps when my pocket vibrated. Emma and Sayer both knew Ivan was stopping by today, which left one person: Mom.
“I never got a chance to tell you what a beautiful place this is,” Ivan said. I offered my hand, elbow locked, but he reached for a side hug.
Holes emerged in my intestines, pushed bile up my throat. He didn’t seem to notice the stiffness to my body when he squeezed my shoulders.
Heat—everywhere. And not the good kind. Not the heat I felt when I was watching Hadrian watch me, when I felt the brush of his fingers on my hand, when I noted the glitter in his eye. A sickly kind of heat.
A dry, deadly heat.
I cleared my throat. “Thank you. Aunt Cadence kept up with it well.”
He licked his bottom lip. “That she did.”
Even the skin around his jaw shined. He’d probably oiled his face before he’d gotten out of the truck.
“I read through the packet, but I wanted to go over it in person.” I slipped through the door first, careful to not keep my back turned to him for long. He ambled in, eyes fondling the archways, the hall, the wide floorboards. He touched the office doorframe, mouth slightly parted.
“Cherry?”
I nodded. I hated to admit it, but Eleanora hadn’t noted such a small detail.
I let my wall inch down. If only a little.
It almost felt normal, talking to him like this.
It reminded me of the times—the good times, though few—we’d had together.
The times he’d visited me at Meredith’s when I was hiding from Mom.
How he’d taken me to a haunted house, religiously, each Halloween.
How he had always tapped me on the shoulder three times before whispering over the desk in class, “Have you finished yet?”
I stared at his hands. The strong but slender fingers, the lack of blemishes on his palms. I remembered how they felt, covering my own hand, as he showed me how to shift a manual in the middle of a backroad.
How he’d said we couldn’t go home until I drove us to my mom’s apartment. How I hadn’t wanted to disappoint him.
A tendril of that same feeling—expectancy, almost—fluttered inside my chest when he met my gaze.
“I have my notes from before,” he said while removing a pen from his shirt pocket. He tucked it behind his ear and nodded down the hallway. “The dining room is fine.”
Cautious, I nodded. Maybe this would be quicker than I thought.
My phone buzzed again. A third time. Ivan led the way and I followed, but about halfway there I slipped my phone out of my pocket, just to make sure it wasn’t important.
Three texts from my mother.
MOM: Why didn’t you tell me?
MOM: Emma knew. You two have been conspiring. That’s why you won’t talk to me.
The last one stopped me in my tracks.
MOM: Care to explain why Penny left your father?
Thinking bubbles appeared. I watched the new message blink onto the screen:
MOM: Are you home now? Where are you?
I stopped in my tracks. The world tilted on its axis.
This couldn’t be true. Emma and I had joked about it growing up, sure—but neither of us had expected Penny to leave Vince.
She’d always denied the affairs, no matter how obvious they were.
Had she finally gotten sick of the cheating, or was it something else?
The tiniest of thoughts came in that moment. Is that why Emma was gone? Was it really because of work, or was that a lie? I hadn’t been honest with her about everything. The thought that she’d known, or at least had a feeling, and hadn’t told me stung.
But if she had—when had I done any better about being open? If Penny left Dad, would Emma have to help her mom move out?
Either way, it would need to wait. I reeled in my thoughts, silenced my phone, and floated into the dining room.
Ivan already had the paperwork sorted at the head of the table by the time I pulled a chair out.
The front page explained the usual—a promise for how long the house would be listed with his group, the commission rate, a marketing plan, a portfolio of the similar homes they’d sold before, and a company information section.
Before he flipped to the following page, he scooted his chair closer to mine.
“I understand you’ve already got the financials settled? The deed is in your name?” One eyebrow arched. He licked his lips while watching me.
“The house was in a trust. A new deed was issued already.” My mouth turned sour. Aunt Cadence had a trust made years ago, which she’d documented with a lawyer, while also planting me as her estate executor. Every last ounce: in my lap.
“Good, good,” he said under his breath. I eyed the distance from his elbow to mine. How his leg inclined toward me. I edged the other way.
“Everything on the financial side is settled,” I said simply. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Awesome.” His voice turned husky. “So, marketing wise. With the comps I pulled, what do you think?” Ivan leaned back, his pen playing between his fingers.
I bit my lip. “What do you mean? I think the comps are in the same range, if that’s what you mean.”
“Are you okay with the marketing plan?”
I glanced down at the sheet. They’d list it on the MLS, per standard, have a few open houses and work with other agencies, which all seemed normal for any larger listing.
Slowly, the wall I’d pulled down started to inch back up.
“Ivan—it all looks fine. I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at.
” Shouldn’t this have been where I was asking him questions?
The commission was a standard commission, which changed depending on the sale price. Unless I was missing something.
He gave a breathy chuckle. Then, he looked at me like he had before, his eyebrows slightly arched and a smile teasing his lips.
Like he might be testing me.
“Do you mind me asking who the other company is you’re debating listing with?”
My eyes narrowed. “I don’t see why that matters.”
“I mean—come on, Lan. You know me. I’ll do what needs to be done to get this thing sold in a good time frame for the best possible price.
” His mouth tilted up at the corner. He raked his fingers through his artfully messy hair, which I suddenly had a strong urge to hold a lighter against. I bet it’d burst into flames from the amount of hairspray he’d used.
“I just want to make sure you’re taken care of.
I know—I understand everything that happened may have dampened our relationship a bit, but I want to set things aside. Everything.”
I blinked fast at his words. May have dampened—not it did.
As if dampening a relationship didn’t hover in the same realm as ending the relationship that he then claimed we’d never had.
Not to mention that he not only diminished what had happened before, but he cushioned the statement with a good deed.
I just want to make sure you’re taken care of.
As if it were a service to me. An honor.
I stared at him, blank. Was the bar really, truly so low that the bare minimum was supposed to knock my socks off?
I felt a snide, younger part of myself settle back in the corner of my mind with a twisted glare. It worked before, didn’t it?
I guess it had. Still, I paced myself. This was transactional. A business meeting, and nothing more, which didn’t need to involve personal feelings.
Yet.
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked. Ivan didn’t notice.
I sat up straighter. Redirect—that’s all I could do, wanted to do. “When do you think would be a good time to list?”
He took a breath and I readied myself. Normally, spring opened strong for new listings.
There was another jump before the holidays, since people loved to move and decorate before Christmas.
It didn’t mean that September was a bad idea, but I knew it might sit for a few months, especially with its size and the fact that it was older.
“Landry, please.” Ivan’s voice wasn’t as guttural as Hadrian’s, but it held a weight to it. An authority, finality that made you feel as if his mind was settled, whether you stepped into his circle of agreement or not.
“I really think we should talk about the problem at hand, right now,” I said. “Which is the house.” That was what he was here for. But I was getting the feeling that he was stalling.
“This is pertinent to right now. I want to work with you. I think we’d make a great team,” he conceded. “I just want to discuss things first. How everything ended.”
I knotted my hands together, anticipation vibrating through me, followed by a sticky, bubbly feeling in my gut.